Some say that Smooth Jazz has survived on Radio because of Broadcast Architecture the leading consultant's of the format in North America other's miss the days of slapping anything on the turn table. We spoke with Allen Kepler Executive Vice President Broadcast Architecture about a format that started at 'The Wave' in Los Angeles and recently debuted in Hamilton and why every song has to count!

John Beaudin - So when you were a little kid did you think to yourself when I grow up I want to practically live on a plane and travel to 30 different cities every 30 days and immerse myself in Smooth Jazz? (laughing)

Allen Kepler - (laughing) It's Insane, Yes.

John - You travel more than most rock stars on tour. You seem to be very hands on with the stations that you work with.

Allen - Oh yeah, we have about 30 Smooth Jazz Radio stations in the U.S. and were doing local research everywhere. It's kind of a different kind of consultantsy so we're very driven by the local research.

John - That has to make a lot of difference. I know there are some who wish that consultants would just go away but there are also a lot of people who credit you, your company specifically for keeping this format healthy and alive.

Allen - It's interesting that when we started consulting we were working with WNUA (Chicago was seventh 12+ with a 4.2 share feb/02.) and they have become our flagship since 1988 and in 1991 we say that a lot of stations in the U.S. were not doing well in the ratings and WNUA was actually starting to flourish a little bit. So I went into see Frank Cody who was our CEO then and said lets do this for other stations, lets consult, lets go do research and we went out and just started doing it.

John - Just like that?

Allen - Oh Yeah! Our first couple of clients, well we actually started maybe backwards because a lot of consulting firms will start with smaller markets. Our first couple of clients were KOAI in Dallas and WQCD in New York (has just ranked 11th 12+ with a 3.2 share and ties for sixth place 25-54 Feb/02) that was early 1992 or late 1991 and both stations were down below a two share and both took off within a year and we're up in the competitive realm of stations in no time in radio terms.

John - Were you as big on local research back then?

Allen - Oh, it was all driven by local research, nothing more than that. We found out what the listeners wanted and helped them out.

John - The fact that this format is coming to Canada first with 'The Wave' in Hamilton that's been on the air for I think under a year and soon in Calgary makes it all worth while for me. When I started playing Smooth Jazz in Edmonton in 1986 the response was amazing. I think we tripled our ratings on the first book (BBM Ratings report) but that still didn't mean a lot because if you have a dollar and you triple it you still don't have a heck of a lot.

Allen - That's true.

John - We started with nothing. It just kept growing though and back in 1986 we were playing 42 hours a week of this stuff and the ratings just kept rising it was gratifying but no one in Canada wanted to touch it as a format 24-7 and trust me I tried I didn't know it then but it was just too soon. Also, much like all your research showed I quickly went from a New Age format to an almost exclusive Smooth Jazz format by the time I did this in Vancouver.

Allen - You know I like New Age music it makes a great show, a two or three hour shows and there's a lot of really great stuff.

John - This site has a lot of New Age reviews and yes, like you, I still listen to it.

Allen - It still sells pretty good too but it's hard to make it work as an ongoing music flow.

John - I talked to a few of our competitors at the CRTC hearings last year when everyone it seemed was applying for a Smooth Jazz format in Vancouver. I was surprised that a few didn't sound too convinced that the format would fly in Canada and here I was waving the flag telling them if ever there was a time it's now. I think share point was an issue of course but obviously that's relative to the market size. As far as WNUA in Chicago is concerned, what's their share in their target demo?

Allen - It's somewhere around a 4.8 in their demo. I don't have it in front of me. I know that mid-day their number one and they hit a 6.5 but yes, you're right, the share is driven by the number of stations in the market and in Chicago there are a lot of signals. So, it's very competitive and it kind of splinters down the ratings.

John - Where are they 25-54?

Allen - The key for KNUA is the rank and that's really what we like to focus on but they were second place 25-54 and at that point it doesn't matter what the share is.

John - No kidding!

Allen - Yeah, second place out of 30 radio stations so that's more of what we focus on.

John - So are you going to consult the new Calgary Smooth Jazz outlet. Are you working with the people in Hamilton?

Allen - No, where is Hamilton?

John - A Little south of Toronto, I've listened to them a lot online.

Allen - I've heard that the ratings aren't showing too well there.

John - I was talking to Brian Hughes a few days ago about this new Smooth Jazz push in Canada and considering he's one of the guitar kings in this genre he's got to be pretty happy.

Allen - Brian's a good friend of mine too and he used to live in Toronto and he moved down to L.A. right?

John - Yes, last year.

Allen - I haven't been able to hook up with him. He should be happy it'll be Brian Hughes every other hour. (Laughing)

John - (Laughing) It doesn't stop there, truly there are many great Canadian acts that fit right in the format, Eddie Bullen, Mark Hasselbach of course. Diana Krall thought most of her stuff wasn't can-con. I think that was also a fear of some of the majors that they'd have to play music that doesn't really fit to meet their can-con requirements, but for the CHUM application I easily came up with 35%.

Allen - I haven't checked with him and I just need to call him but Warren Hill is from Canada originally.

John - Most of his stuff is Can-con I noticed from his newer albums that about half of it isn't though. Have you spent any time in Canada?

Allen - You know my wife's from Canada she's from Winnipeg.

John - Is that right? Are you familiar with the Smooth Jazz application in Winnipeg that Global is going after?

Allen - No, not yet.

John - You know one of the things that I love about this format, that since 1986 I've never interviewed an ass.

Allen - (Laughing) Really!

John - Really! I syndicated a Rock show before I got into this stuff and trust me I've talked to a few people who were just too struck on their own importance. Okay, maybe it was only 2-3 artists but in this format I've always encountered adults who would always go the extra mile for you to do a show, to be on an album, to do a promo, to lend their name and when I had no budget these people helped me with all my crazy promotional ideas.

Allen - They are great that way. I think some of them would come up there to record.

John - You think so? You mean U.S. artists coming to Canada to record so what they have is can-con?

Allen - I would to get airplay if someone produced and recorded an album up there and their not Canadian that would still qualify right?

John - You just need two out of four parts to qualify.

Allen - There's probably a pretty good market for sales up there too. I always thought Vancouver would be a great market for it because our station in Seattle does so well.

John - Well, I can tell you the ratings were great on our show at QM-FM. I always loved the freedom they gave me with the format, it really worked. So KKJZ in Portland just flipped from Smooth Jazz to AC. (adult contemporary).

Allen - There are a couple of people looking at it. You know when it goes away especially in the U.S. a lot of time it boils down to the General Manager of the station and the sales staff didn't get it.

John - I can't agree with you more.

Allen - That station was actually doing fairly well in billing the format. Their turning into another AC and there are already four AC station in the market. So, it seems like kind of a strange decision but I'm hoping maybe someone else will jump on it because they had pretty stable ratings. We will see.

John - When you were with WNUA (Chicago) what did you do?

Allen - I did a lot of things, I did on air, I did Music Director and of course all of the research and by the end I was the Marketing Director. I really wanted to get back into the music and really wanted to get into the research end of what Broadcast Architecture was doing. They had the same parent company as us so I moved over to New Jersey and went to work for Broadcast Architecture in 1990. Interestingly, when I started working there it was called "Music for a New-Age".

John - Well, that was the same slogan I used in Edmonton in the beginning.

Allen - Well for us it was like the call letter WNUA you know the NU-A stood for New Age and we were doing one on one research which I love.

John - That's working with one person at a time right? Do you still do focus groups?

Allen - We learn more from that than even the music testing. It's like focus groups without the mob mentality of focus groups and having to manage that room with personalities. We spend two days and interview 30 different people one person at a time and we video tape the interview and it's really just one person talking to another and I come in as just Allen the research geek (Laughing) who lives out in L.A. and I'm just finding out what's happening in radio here in whatever city I'm in. We really screen them as to be P1 (First preference) to the radio station but we don't tell them we're there to talk about that station . We just say we're here to talk about radio listening you know we ask what's your favorite radio station and they talk about their favorite station.

John - Isn't that where the term Smooth Jazz came from?

Allen - Yes, out of one on one interviews back in 1989 is where the term Smooth Jazz actually came from. We didn't know what to call the stations because the music was transitioning from New Age to something else. Everyone was saying "well it's Jazz but it's not like that kind of Jazz" so we didn't want to call the station Jazz or Jazz FM or anything like that and we didn't want to call it Light-Jazz because we had a very strong AC station called Lite-FM and people would say it was light-Jazz.

John - Sure but that also wasn't quite right we also used Contemporary Jazz.

Allen - There were a lot of names thrown around weren't there. We kept asking them to throw out words. A lot of people were using smooth and a lot of people were using Jazz and we had this one woman in particular and I can still see her face and she said, " you know it's Jazz but it's not like the old school it's smooth, it's Smooth Jazz" and it was like wow! (Laughing)

John - (laughing) that's it! So it did come from that!

Allen - That's where the actual name came from and it's stuck pretty well as a marketing term and in fact even if you look at other products in the world of marketing in the 90's the word smooth has been a very popular word for product.

John - There are always a few who call radio stations and have an idea that what you're calling your music is wrong and wouldn't you know they have a few ideas.

Allen - (laughing) There are! They are usually the local musicologists that say that's not really Jazz.

John - And there is a lot of that in Jazz just think of the different genres of Jazz; Bebop, Swing, Cocktail, Latin, Afro Cuban, Progressive etc. I found that all the musicians I talk to are okay with Smooth Jazz but there are always a few here and there that are big on the hierarchy of Jazz.

Allen - the Jazz Police? (Laughing)

John - (laughing) Well put! Do you run into a lot of that?

Allen - Very little of it. As time marches on it becomes more rare you know, most normal consumers of radio even the ones that are Jazz fans and we see this on one on ones over and over again. For example, in Philadelphia fans will distinguish the difference saying "sometimes I'm in the mood for that old traditional stuff but the Smooth Jazz station that just makes me feel good and I just relax to that music and I listen to it all day when I work". So it has different uses for each of the versions of the format and one thing our company does that kind of addresses that is we co-produce the Ramsey Lewis legends of Jazz show.

John - That's a pretty good show and what a perfect guy to host. I remember 'The In Crowd' he's been doing this since what the early 60's?

Allen - Yeah. We actually write the script and help out with the music on that show and we kind of co-created it. So that's kind of a nice relief valve for them on Sunday night.

John - So The Wave in L.A. (3.5-3.7 and scores a tie for seventh 12+ Feb/02) still bills top 10 in the U.S.

Allen - Yes, they are still in the top 10 they're pushing close to 50 million dollars in billing and I believe they're second or third in Los Angeles for all the stations.

John - In the 80's NAC (New Adult Contemporary which evolved into Smooth Jazz) was the second fasting moving format as far as start up after the gold format, where is it at now?

Allen - It's tougher to follow now when you look at national rankings of formats it always falls on a national average at a mid 3 share but alot of markets don't have a Smooth Jazz station. It's typically beating the classic rock station in 25-54 or the jammin' oldies station, so it's typically beating a lot of legendary call letters and we're not playing the greatest hits of all time.

John - It's pretty amazing when you look at that stand point. What's the biggest misconception about the Smooth Jazz format?

Allen - John the biggest misconception is that the Smooth Jazz format is a niche but if you look at the formats that it soundly defeats in so many markets and if you look at the demographics of the listeners it's anything but a niche.

John - Break it down for me.

Allen - Sure, we dominate a category that has a twenty year age span 25-54, we typically do very well with both men and women.

John - Sure and most formats are either male oriented or female.

Allen - We also spread ethnic diversity that reflects the market place. For example, in L.A. we have a large number of black listeners we have a large number of Hispanics etc where most radio stations don't replicate the market that way. So it's not a niche. The style of music in Smooth Jazz may not seem as popular as a CHR or Oldies station but when you look at the demographics of the people listening it's really a mass appeal station.

John - What about the misconception that it's background? That one I never got.

Allen - I think that was more created by people selling against it (laughing) because they don't want the advertisers to get a taste of it and see how listeners respond. I guess the best example on how they respond is shown by how well stations like WNUA in Chicago do and KTWV The Wave in L.A. bill. That billing wouldn't be there if the advertisers weren't getting a response.

John - It's all in educating the public and those misconceptions kind of fly by the wayside. And truly if the General Manager, Program Director, Music Director live for this stuff they will have jocks (Announcers) that also do and that will make the machine run very smoothly.

Allen - Sure, KVJZ in Des Moines this is a very exiting story for me because we put on this station on August 30th and they debuted with a 6.6 which is the highest share in the format in the U.S. and it's Des Moines and my attitude is if it'll fly in Des Moines it'll fly anywhere.

John - Sure, Des Moines is middle America.

Allen - Well, it's exactly what you just said. If the General Manager and the folks implementing the format believe in it, it will do well as a business.

John - I started listening to this stuff in 1975-76 and even back then I knew it would be a format but it was strange I never told my friends about my Bob James albums but as I got older I kind of came out of the Smooth Jazz closet. I look at a guy like Lee Ritenour who I know was probably making pretty good coin doing sessions back in the 70's but when I got my first broadcasting gig at a local cable TV station in Newcastle New Brunswick in 1979 I would refuse to use Lee's music as bg (background Music) for commercials. I just figured this guy was background for no one, he's better than that.

Allen - You're absolutely right. I'm almost the same age as you.

John - I'm 42.

Allen - I'll be 40 this year. I went to high school in Kansas City and I played in Jazz bands in high school. I played trumpet, French horn and trombone and I played in Jazz bands with Norman Brown and Norman was unbelievable he was a prodigy when he was a child. He was 15-16 years old and he was playing at the uptown theatre and he and I both knew that we had to get out of Kansas City to pursue our dreams and I ended up in radio and he ended up being a recording artist.

John - But didn't he too take awhile to make it, to be known?

Allen - Sure, he was in L.A. for ten years and he worked for the guitar institute. He was a teacher and he did local gigs. Yes, he paid his dues before he started his recording career.

John - What do you want to tell the folks out there who are afraid of consultants?

Allen - I think if you talk to people who are successful within the industry even people who maybe criticized us 8-9 years ago they have an understanding that this is a business and the same things happening in the record label industry with the consolidation. If an artist is not selling records they're gone off the label. If we don't have listeners we're gone and we're into another format so our goal has always been to help the stations gain ratings but not at all costs. We try to look at the big picture and help artists develop and it's worked pretty well we have a flourishing number of artists doing well here in the U.S. Although, the competition is much heavier everybody who puts out a CD doesn't get on the radio but that's really driven by competition and the cream rising to the top.

John - Isn't it a myth that this format only does well in heavily black populated cities? Because it did well in Edmonton and Vancouver both of which have a heavy ethnic population but not many blacks.

Allen - Sure that's a myth because the only station that's only hit #1 rank not 25-54 but 12+ is KYOT in Phoenix and it's a very non ethnic City and KWJZ has been a consistently high rated station in the U.S. and the Des Moines. So my take on that is that Smooth Jazz reflects back whatever the market is. If the city is heavily ethnic the station will be a little more heavily ethnic. Tampa Florida is another market that does extremely well. The target of 35-54 includes the largest population bulge in the U.S. The largest population fifteen year bulge is 35-49 right now. The second largest population bulge is 5-19 and the smallest group of people are in the 20-34 year olds that's the smallest fifteen year age group of people.

John - It makes sense.

Allen - It does because you have the first baby boom at 35-49 or 35-54. You've got the new baby boom at 5-15 years old and in between there is kind of the generation X where there weren't as many people being born so that's a smaller part of the population.

John - It's kind of following the aging of the population.

Allen - If you look at it with common sense it couldn't be much younger because you'd be looking at folks that were born in 1972.

John - Tell me about some of the diversity in the format. I know that some stations are heavier on the urban feel. Where do you think it's going?

Allen - A lot of the stations are drawing from the classic music of the 70's that you and I both listened to when we were listening to Lee Ritenour type music. I mean Bob James, Dave Grusin and those guys were doing this whatever you want to call it back then. Some people called it fusion Jazz and on the vocal side of things the music that most closely represented that sound was Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. So a lot of the stations incorporated some of that, a lot of the stations play Luther Vandross and some play Mariah Carey. What's very exiting right now are some of the artists like Alicia Keys, Sting, Enya and Sade. All these artists are doing very well right now.

John - Those vocalists really compliment that format. For me at 42 this is a perfect sound to listen to. I love Smooth Jazz and I get to hear a lot of the vocals I grew up with. Isn't it hard to break into Smooth Jazz if you a vocalist?

Allen - You know John It's hard to break into any radio format if you're a vocalist. The music that has stuck in this format is the stuff that has crossed over to other formats like Sade, Anita Baker and Enya. I think that's more of a competitive factor than a Smooth Jazz Issue.

John - So how do you test your music? I heard it's a bit different.

Allen - We sort of take the research analyst mentality out of research by letting the listeners vote emotionally about songs. Rather than filling out a bubble sheet giving that song a 3 or whatever, they actually have a little box in their hand that's wireless. It has a hand held dial and it has a LED screen that goes from 0-100 and it shows every number on the LED screen and you can turn it from 0 to 100 in about half a second so you can react very quickly. The way we test music is let the listeners react emotionally. So if they hear something they really love they'll turn the dial up towards a 100 if they hear something they really hate they go to 0 and if they're kind of neutral about it they hang around 50. So what we help stations do is obviously avoid songs that people hate. We also help them avoid mediocre neutral scores.

John - That's exactly how we react in our cars. We don't like the song, bang, the dial gets turned in 2 seconds. You don't think about hating or loving a song you just know it and you know it now.

Allen - Exactly, and if you hear a song you like what do you do?

John - You turn it up so you have that reflex in mind with the box.

Allen - Yes, it's a very natural reaction and our computer tracks the response every second you literally see that dial move within the first 2 seconds of hearing the song. We also encourage listeners to change their minds if they want too. We don't take the read until the end of the song. Sometimes you'll get an old song an "oh wow" type of song and the line will go way up to 90 then they'll go back down to 82 and they'll kind of flat line out now. You see, 82 is a good score but it's not a 90 and what happened was they reacted by recognition and then they leveled out to what they really feel about the song. That's the way we research all the music and I think it's been beneficial to this format because so much of this music is unfamiliar. This type of research doesn't penalize unfamiliar music so it lets people say I like what I'm hearing even if they don't know it.

John - So how will the format do in Canada?

Allen - I think it has a lot of potential to do well and the main reason to me is take a market like Calgary, there aren't a lot of choices on the FM dial. I've been up there a few times and have relatives there and when you tune around you have pretty good radio but I think what Smooth Jazz is going to offer is something that can really provide a lightning rod of excitement to people and maybe these are people that haven't been that excited about radio. It's something that's different, that's actually different as opposed to another 80's format.

John - The reaction from my experience is hundreds of calls from people saying "Oh, I didn't know what I was looking for but I knew I'd know it if I heard it and you're playing it".

Allen - And John we target the format to the local audience in every city that it goes on, that there's a localized version of it in every city. I know there are some folks saying that all the Smooth Jazz stations in the U.S. sound the same, well they really don't because they all sound different because of research. They are all able to focus on what that local market is wanting. They might sound more the same than they used to before but they are more focused and certainly a hit is a hit.

John - No matter where you go, that reflects in other formats too.

Allen - Absolutely, it's just going to reflect the local nuances of each market. And there's really not much room to miss anymore because the market is so competitive.

John - You test every song right?

Allen - We test every song that's on the radio and the focus isn't necessarily on the new music it's more on the library. The library is really the foundation, that's the familiar stuff that people hear that allows you to take some risks with new music in between. The Wave in L.A. turned 15 Feb 14 that's almost as long of a run as KMET had before.

John - Yes I remember KMET was rock before switching over to The Wave. I still have hours of tapes from the different stages of the station, them and KKSF in San Francisco. Allen, thanks so much for the chat it's been fun.

Allen - Thanks John, It's been great.